Is PolitiFact campaigning for Obama?

posted at 8:01 pm on August 19, 2012 by Dustin Siggins

Recently, the fact-checking organizations PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org failed to properly analyze an ad by President Obama claiming that Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than the average American. Just Facts President Jim Agresti and I subsequently hammered both organizations for what appears to be a severe case of intellectual dishonesty.

Unfortunately, this is an increasingly common problem at PolitiFact. Conservatives rightly point to a liberal bent at Fact Check, but the organization is pretty solid at analyzing what’s going on with claims by members of both major political parties. On the other hand, with the arrival of the general election and the otherwise politically-quiet month of August, PolitiFact seems to have gone from being a respectable, if liberal-leaning, organization to a campaign slot for Obama.

This Obama bias was shown in a recent claim by PolitiFact Wisconsin (PFW) that a Tweet by Obama national co-chair and actress Eva Longoria about Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is “half-true.” From the Tweet:

Again, PFW ranks this claim as “half-true.” Their primary evidence? An unsubstantiated claim by President Obama in April 2012:

Fortunately, our colleagues at PolitiFact National evaluated a similar statement made by Obama himself in April 2012, a few days after the GOP-controlled House approved Ryan’s budget resolution. (The plan didn’t pass in the Democratic-controlled Senate.)

Obama said that if spending reductions in the resolution “were to be spread out evenly,” nearly 10 million college students would see their financial aid cut by an average of more than $1,000 each. The White House told our colleagues the president was referring to the Pell Grant program.

So, Ryan’s plan does not specify cuts to Pell Grants. Obama is simply applying the total spending cuts in the plan evenly across the overall budget to derive a Pell Grant number.

This alone should make PolitiFact’s claim laughable. However, following a link from the PFW analysis to the Department of Education’s website, one sees the Department has requested Pell Grants whose cost will total $36.629 billion – meaning that in a budget proposal that spends nearly one hundred times what the Department has requested, PolitiFact is making big assumptions. And while the liberal Center for Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP) makes the claim that Pell Grants would take $166 billion in “cuts” over ten years if the Ryan/House budget were to be made, those “cuts” are assumed from the language of the budget proposal, not directly stated by the budget proposal.

PFW continues to shoot itself in the proverbial foot as the article goes further. It turns out most of their analysis is based upon a “he said, she said” situation:

FactCheck.org also looked at Pell Grants and Ryan’s plan. The University of Pennsylvania-based fact checkers concluded“it is certainly true that Ryan’s budget would require deep spending cuts,” but “it is hard to know what impact Ryan’s budget would have on specific programs because the plan contains so few details.”

We also sought input from Gillian Morris, spokeswoman for Obama’s campaign in Wisconsin, and Kevin Seifert, campaign manager for Ryan, who remains on the November 2012 ballot for his House seat.

Obama’s campaign cited an April 2012 opinion column by The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, which claims without evidence that 1 million students would lose Pell grants altogether. But that wasn’t Obama’s or Longoria’s claim. The campaign also provided a March 2012 blog post by Obama’s Office of Management and Budget director, but it uses the same assumptions the president did in his claim.

Ryan’s plan would make fewer students eligible for Pell money, according to an article in the conservative National Review cited by Ryan’s spokesman. But while bringing Pell spending “under control,” the budget would nevertheless maintain the maximum Pell grant at $5,500, Ryan wrote in response to criticism of his plan.

But it’s not over yet! In its closing, PFW makes its “half-true” rating even less believable:

We’re giving Longoria the same rating Obama got for making a claim that is partially accurate but leaves out important details — Half True.

To this writer, a “partially accurate” claim should get a “half-true” rating. That is, after all, basically the definition of “partially accurate.” To leave out important details on a partially accurate claim means the claim should either be “mostly false” or “false.”

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Why do we continue to ask that question? We all know by this stage of the game that the vast majority of all media outlets, of all kinds and descriptions are left wing propaganda machines. Accept it and move on.

Smart of Democrats. Set up a fact checking website that appears to be neutral, until it’s time for discussing Democrat talking points. Then all opinions lie in Democratic favor. Very clever.

If morally despicable.

Book on August 19, 2012 at 8:09 PM

Democrats have no morals or ethics, they have sold their souls to Satan in the form of adopting Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. If you have never read Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals you may think what I am saying is mere hyperbolic rhetoric. If you have read them, then you understand exactly where they got the idea to do that, and why.

I actually don’t trust ANY FACTCHECKERS. And least of all anything associated with the Washington NotPost.

BTW, If you’re on Facebook this is a funny site with lots of pics, etc. about the DOTUS. MMMMMM, I didn’t see any references ironically to any “fact” checking organizations. There’s a great picture of Valerie Jarrett and her quote about Obama.

They’re bought and paid for by a communist who will do anything unscrupulous he can find to do. The truth is alien to him, and freedom to him is a sin. A bigger sin to the racist obama is that white people can breathe at all. If he gets 4 more years he’ll do all he can to remedy these problems.

I quit using PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org a long time ago. They’re both so deep in the liberal ilk’s hip pocket that they can’t be bothered to tell truths and give facts — and they haven’t for a very long time.

These days, you just can’t trust anybody for even a modicum of truth and facts — but yourself.

What we really need is an official US Ministry of Information and Propaganda. That way, all of us would get the “truth” handed to us directly and the media would not have to contort itself into pretzels in order to appear to be “unbiased.”

I don’t know about the 1% tax rate thing as I’m not inclined to trust the DNC, but I was rather surprised to hear Romney say he’d paid at least 13% over the last ten years! I thought he would say like 20% or higher.

OK, so that’s more in actual dollars even though I pay a higher percent, but that really doesn’t sound all that bad…doesn’t mean I don’t hate the income tax regardless. Mitt should have to pay a tax on what he spends just like everyone else. He has more money, so he’ll spend more and thus kick in more revenue. And if he (or I) don’t want to spend, no one can just come in and demand our money, just because they can take it.

Aid was capped with regard to the number of years it could apply. While that in and of itself is not a problem, the fact that the changes apply retroactively at the same time that many state legislatures restructured their own student aid programs to function off of Pell puts many students (especially those near graduation) in an awful position with no warning.

If similar changes were made to medicare or social security there would be blood in the streets, but because the changes applied to a small demographic with no power, money, or voice everyone goes along their merry way.

And yes, I am very personally affected by those changes, and I am bitter about them.

You have got to frickin be kidding me. The New Black Panthers threaten to use violence at the GOP convention in Florida, Obama and Holder still have not come clean about Fast and Furious the DOJ refuses to file charges against Jon Corzine and yet some bunghole thinks this is news worthy?

You have got to frickin be kidding me. The New Black Panthers threaten to use violence at the GOP convention in Florida, Obama and Holder still have not come clean about Fast and Furious the DOJ refuses to file charges against Jon Corzine and yet some bunghole thinks this is news worthy?

SWalker on August 19, 2012 at 8:58 PM

I hope you don’t mind but I just copied and pasted your reply over at Politico. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Don’t be silly. Politico hosted a Republican debate and the Republican Party would be a discredited joke that needs to be disbanded immediately if it turned out Politico was in league with the Democrat Party. So obviously they are a credible source.

I only wish it were true. Pell Grants have turned into a game where schools radically hike their tuition knowing that more students can get grants from the government thus shoveling tax money to overpaid leftist college educators who can’t make it at a real job. I would rate this tweet: “I wish it were true, but we all know that it won’t happen, therefore, unfortunately this is a false statement.”

Did anyone have any doubt that this would be the eventual role of those two organizations, especially given their origins?

Sort of clever in a Machiavellian way, but not surprising at all.

Would expect that by election time, every utterance of The One will be full-on truth as judged by these organizations and every utterance by Team Romney will be “Pants on Fire”. That will include Team Romney making the statement that the sky is blue or water is wet.

Here’s the problem, and it’s really PolitiFact’s problem. Statements, even with multiple clauses, collected and distributed facts and strings of assertions, are digital, not analog. That is, either the entire statement is true, or it’s false. “Mostly True” or “Half True” leaves too much room for shenanigans. You can mischaracterize much of what your opponent says far too easily.

My solution? If you want to be a fact checker, then your assessment should be either “entirely true” or “false in one or more ways.” End of story. This isn’t Princess Bride where the victim can be “only mostly dead.”

A better question is, how often do conservatives give them cover to play this exact game by quoting them as an authority when they like what they have to say?

Sometimes Politifact sticks directly to the facts and calls out both sides. The same is true of factcheck.org. But you’re a fool to count on it. Every time Politifact criticizes a lie from the left, and you quote them approvingly, you’re giving them credibility to use when they show unmistakable bias.

The truth is that Politifact is as often as not Politifiction. Just because they put “fact” in their name and claim to call both sides out does not mean that we should pretend that their claims are true.

They are purely self-appointed referees, and in any case where the truth is more a matter of opinion, they’re going to favor the liberal slant.

Everyone should have picked up on this when Palin talked about “Death Panels” and Politifact called it, “The Lie of the Year.” Of course it was not a lie, at all, but a characterization of certain provisions of Obamacare that they disagreed with.

By accepting their false claims to be “fact-based” at face value, you give them the very credibility they are now attempting to use to promote Obama.

Bottom line: If Politifact ever gets it right in calling out a liberal liar, don’t do a story that says, “Politifact says that is a a lie.” The story should say, “Even Politificact agrees that it is a lie.”

Otherwise you’re letting yourself get played by someone who wants to declare himself the referee.

I faught Politifact for over 2 months over Obama using signing statements, shortly after his election, and it being 1 of his many promises. They relented eventually, and rated it a “compromise”. And though they have noted 18 more instances, it is still rated a compromise. In other words, Politifact is horseshiat.

Just as a historical reminder (and a repeat of what I pointed out on the GR thread), the Lening…er, St. Petersburg Times, the host paper of the national version of Politi”Fact”, won a 2009 Pulitzer for Politi”Fact”‘s role in electing Teh SCOAMF.

If I have to listen to political information from Hawt Chicks, I want to hear what Victoria Beckham has to say. Not because the information will because the information will be better, but because she has better legs.